VIFF -- Review: School for Defectors

An intimate look at North Korean students in the south

School for Defectors (2026)

North Koreans who want to escape to the south face enormous challenges, not only the physical one of traveling over 3,000 miles through China, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, but also the emotional trauma of leaving their families behind, or the possibility of being killed during their journey, and what will happen to their children if they die? 

There are no statistics on how many North Koreans attempt to escape, but they are desperate for a better life.

If they make it to the south, the next challenge is settling in, as their accent is different, let alone their appearance being malnourished and wearing dowdy clothes, and how will their children adapt and catch up academically?

The documentary focused on this school

In South Korea there are 10 special schools for these North Korean children to study and help them not only integrate into society, but also learn about democracy, freedom and become good people.

School for Defectors focuses on one senior high school which is different from the other nine in that it only accepts 20 students and they all must board; the principal says it helps the children integrate faster if they are not with their parents. 

The audience basically observe a whole academic school year, from the intake of students through interviews with the principal and teachers, to attending classes, applying for university, and graduating. There is also a peek into dorm life, watching them clean their rooms for inspection, and eating meals in the cafeteria.

The principal and teachers are so supportive of the students, praising and encouraging them, as they know their escaping to the south was no easy feat, and that they may feel inferior or insecure, but the students in turn are also eager to learn, hardworking and some of them eventually come out of their shells to be talkative, boisterous, and even exceptional dancers.

The students are hardworking a funny

One segment shows interviews with some of the parents who described their plight to the south, with one poignant scene of a father who had thought of what to do if he and his wife and daughter were caught by North Korean soldiers, while another family had to leave their older son and elderly grandmother behind.

Nevertheless, the optimistic energy from the students, teachers and principal are what uplifts School for Defectors, which resulted in lots of clapping in the theatre when the documentary ended.

Director Jeremy Workman attended the screening with producer and Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim.

It turns out I had seen Workman's previous documentary, Secret Mall Apartment two years ago and thought it was a crazy but intriguing story.

He explained that when he was in South Korea screening another film he had made, Workman was asked to show it at that school, and that's how he met the principal, who speaks good English.

Workman learned about more about the school, and was fascinated by it and was eager to possibly do a documentary about it. He got the green light from the principal, and anyone who didn't want to participate was not filmed, or their faces were pixelated if they were worried about relatives back in North Korea.

Workman (centre) and Kim (right) at the Q&A

He said he went back several times to film at the school, though he had a crew based there who filmed as well. One of the students at first was so painfully shy that she barely said a word, but by the end of the school year, she was willing to talk on camera about her school project, collecting first-hand accounts of North Koreans who escaped to the south and compiling them into a booklet.

What was not clearly explained in the film, that Kim talked about in the Q&A, was that the journey to escape was extremely dangerous, not only in avoiding getting shot by North Korean soldiers, but also avoiding arrest and deportation in China, sometimes having to stay there for years to earn enough money to continue their escape, or women being sex trafficked and being forced to marry Chinese men.

Then they had to trek through Cambodia, Laos and Thailand which involved going through jungles, difficult terrain, and having enough stamina to make it to South Korea.

School for Defectors was definitely one of the more memorable documentaries I saw this year, appreciating how much the students and their parents have gone through, and hoping they will succeed in whatever they do after high school.

School for Defectors

Directed by Jeremy Workman

92 minutes

Visiting Capilano Suspension Bridge

Hold on as you walk across the shaky bridge!

With a relative in town I did a very tourist thing today -- we went to Capilano Suspension Bridge in North Vancouver. I can't even remember the last time I went, so this was a good refresher with many new features since 2004.

Tickets aren't cheap -- $72.95 for adults plus tax it's $76.60 -- but if you can get downtown, you can catch a free shuttle bus to the tourist landmark.

Stunning views of the bridge at various points

We caught it at the back of Hyatt Regency Vancouver and about 15 minutes later we had arrived -- along with another busload of people.

As we bought tickets in advance, we were able to walk in right away and soon join the relatively short line to cross the Capilano Suspension Bridge.

The bridge was originally built in 1889 and was made of hemp ropes and a deck of cedar planks. It was later replaced with a wire cable bridge in 1903. 

It doesn't look daunting at first, but once you step onto the bridge, held up with steel cables, it's unsettling because the foot bridge sways a bit. You have to at least hold onto the steel cable handrail, and traffic coming from the opposite side also adds complications to the steadiness of the bridge.

My cousin was pretty freaked out and held on for dear life. I just held on with my right hand and clutching my iPhone for dear life. I didn't dare take pictures!

We made it over to the other side of the bridge. and began exploring the massive park that is filled with Douglas Firs, Cedars and Hemlocks. You can hear a few birds here and there, and some running streams. 

We learned a lot about the banana slug today

At the Raptor Ridge, we met three people who had a different bird attached to their left hand glove. They sat there and rested their hand on an arm rest, the bird attached to the glove.

The expert trio fielded people's questions about a Great Horned Owl that is nine years old, and likes to vocalise; a 21-year-old Saker Falcon, and a Bay-Winged Hawk that is used to scare away seagulls from sports venues. They don't live in Capilano but Maple Ridge and come out periodically on rotation with several other predator birds.

We also learned about banana slugs. What? They are yellow slugs with two pairs of antennae, 27,000 teeth, when handled release a numbing agent, and would take 15 hours to slide across the Capilano Suspension Bridge.

There isn't just the bridge, but two other nature walks that take you up into the trees. One is called Treetops Adventure, where you walk along narrow wooden bridges between trees, and another called Cliffwalk, where you walk along a path secured onto the side of a rock face!

By the time we went through the entire park, it was just over two hours. We went through the gift shop which is very big, and sells a bunch of nice stuff including Herschel knapsacks, retro CBC T-shirts, honey and maple syrup products, fudge and ice cream.

Cliffwalk had scenic views too

As we were leaving there was a massive line to get onto the suspension bridge and I got a certificate certifying that I had survived the Capilano Suspension Bridge! A fun souvenir.

We encountered tourists from Taiwan, The UK, South Korea, and United States and luckily we didn't have to wait too long to get onto the shuttle to get back to downtown. 

The logistics of the park was very well managed and most of the staff are cheery and informative. They have an activity booklet for kids, and if you hang around for some informative sessions, you will be rewarded with a sticker or stamp.

Capilano Suspension Bridge

3735 Capilano Road

North Vancouver, BC

604 985 7474

Yunchan Lim Dazzles Vancouver Audience

Standing ovation for Lim at the Orpheum

South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim is 20 years old and burst onto the international music scene two years ago when he was the youngest person to win the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition two years ago.

He was in Vancouver today to perform for a concert put on by the Vancouver Recital Society at the Orpheum Theatre and not surprisingly most of the people in the audience were South Korean!

Youngest Van Cliburn winner at 18

Lim arrived this morning from San Diego and immediately went to the Orpheum to get used to the piano and his surroundings; when he arrived there was already a female fan waiting outside at the side entrance!

On stage he looks even younger than 20, and is painfully shy, partly because he doesn't speak much English, and suddenly becoming famous must surely be overwhelming.

The concert program started with contemporary composer Hanurij Lee's piece "... Round and velvety-smooth blend..." which sounded like raindrops. It was a very short piece of about five minutes and Lim left little time for the audience to react when he immediately launched right into JS Bach's Goldberg Variations, which consists of an aria and 30 variations.

Lim played all of them in succession, with a lot of expressive range, from conservative and quiet for the aria, which built up to tremendous energy and movement for the 30th and last variation, and then back to the soft delicate notes of the aria again.

Lim receiving bouquets from fans

Needless to say as soon as he finished playing his last note, the audience jumped to their feet and clapped and whooped loudly. Lim came out three or four times, bowing, and fans rushed to the stage to give him several bouquets of flowers, and even a teddy bear which he placed in the piano as he played an encore (Liszt). He didn't even wait for the crowd to sit down when he started playing his encore piece.

He leaves tomorrow morning for New York to play at Carnegie Hall and then back to South Korea for more concerts. 

It is clear that music is the medium through which Lim communicates with the world; he feels right at home with the instrument. At only 20 years old -- 21 later this month -- Lim is definitely one to watch in the years ahead.

Yunchan Lim 

Hanurij Lee ... Round and velvety smooth blend...

JS Bach Goldberg Variations

Fact of the Day: Hongkongers' Long Lives

Hongkongers have some of the longest life expectancies 

An Associated Press article about life expectancy has some interesting facts about the places in the world where people live the longest.

S. Jay Olshansky is a University of Ilinois-Chicago researcher and he and his team found that humans have pretty much hit the limit of life expectancy.

As part of the study, the researchers focused on eight places where people live the longest. In alphabetical order they are: Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland.

There seems to be more people reaching 100 years old -- like former US President Jimmy Carter last week. And Olshansky says in 2019, a little over 2 percent of Americans made it to that age, compared to 5 percent in Japan and 9 percent in Hong Kong.

9 percent! That's a pretty amazing statistic, though five years on, one wonders if that percentage still stands.

Nevertheless it's pretty impressive!

Pent-Up Demand to Travel

Chinese residents are eager to travel abroad from January 8

Soon after Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said the border between Hong Kong and China would be lifted by mid-January, it was confirmed the date would be January 8, and this would include international flights.

Thirty minutes after this announcement, the number of enquiries on travel website Ctrip.com surged 500 percent. Who can blame them after being isolated from the rest of the world for almost three years?

And the top 10 destinations Chinese residents are looking to travel to?

Top places are Macau, Hong Kong and Japan

Macau, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and United Kingdom.

Queries for flights to the mainland also shot up after it was announced travellers coming into China would not need to do nucleic acid tests or quarantine, though a PCR test would be needed 48 hours before flying. 

The government also promises to make it easier for for business travellers and foreigners working in China to get visas more easily. During the pandemic overseas travellers could only enter China if they had a valid residency permit or obtained a relevant visa.

With this news, flights from Hong Kong to Shanghai increased by 1,039 percent, while searches for trips to Beijing and Hangzhou rose by 718 percent and 662 percent respectively.

Hongkongers looking to cross the border must do so at the Shenzhen Bay checkpoint, where there is a daily quota of 3,500.

Hongkongers can cross border at Shenzhen Bay

Perhaps most interesting is from January 8, Beijing is downgrading Covid-19 from a top-tier infectious disease into a second-tier one, putting it in the same category as HIV, viral hepatitis, and H7N9 bird flu.

These sudden changes are a lot to take in after years of Beijing scaring people about Covid-19.

Nevertheless this latest announcement not only allows international business to resume -- if there is any left -- but more importantly for family reunions to finally take place after years of being apart.

But still -- with the number of cases surging and not enough people vaccinated in the country, is now the best time to open up China to the world?

Regina Ip Demands Google Answers

Ip asking for Google to come to Legco to answer questions

The saga over the wrong anthem played at rugby matches overseas continues to be dragged out, this time by Executive Council convenor Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, who wants Google executives to answer questions in the Legislative Council.

She said she would write to Legco president Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen to invite the behemoth search engine to answer lawmakers' questions, and if they refused, Ip would seek to invoke the Legislative Council (Power and Privileges) Ordinance to summon them. 

"If they ignore the summons, a warrant can be issued. It's a criminal offence and offenders can be jailed up to 12 months," she warned.

The 2019 protest song is the top search result

In other words, the Google executives are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Ip added a majority in Legco was all that was needed to call on the ordinance.

Last month Hong Kong's rugby team competed in Incheon, South Korea, where Glory to Hong Kong, a song associated with the 2019 protests, was played instead of the Chinese national anthem, March of the Volunteers.

Korean organisers apologised for the incident, claiming when they looked it up online, Glory to Hong Kong came up first. And so pro-establishment lawmakers are urging Google to tweak the algorithm so that March of the Volunteers came up first.

The lawmakers, in a bid to prove their patriotism to their Beijing masters are probably hoping to get air time grilling Google executives, but they won't get very far.

The wrong anthem was played in Incheon

As long as people keep searching for "Hong Kong anthem", then the protest song will come up first -- this is how Google works because this is what users are searching for. No amount of buying advertising will change the algorithm, as I found out in a podcast called Freakonomics in an episode called "Is Google Getting Worse?"

Freakonomics host Stephen Dubner interviews Liz Reid, vice president of Search at Google.

At one point she explains the correlation between search results and advertising:

"Behind the scenes in Search, we take great pride in not only trying to provide high-quality results, but ensuring that they are not influenced by ads. So we have a very strong culture that says whether or not you're an advertiser, does not allow you to change the results we show. You cannot pay us to change how you show. Those results are very pure, and we go to great lengths to ensure that this is the case. And so the quality of the search we provide is run separately from the ads to do that."

Reid says ads and search results are separate

So one can imagine if and when these Google executives go to Legco, lawmakers are going to go red in the face with frustration that the search engine giant will refuse to budge. 

But watching this process might be entertaining so don't miss it! 

Ip Stokes NSL Flames in Anthem Fiasco

Some revisionism going on at the Asian Rugby Sevens Series

The national anthem fiasco at the Asian Rugby Sevens Series will not end.

Now it turns out the Korean Rugby Union, which was involved in organising the tournament, never received the recording of the national anthem, March of the Volunteers from the Hong Kong team.

Earlier it was suggested the Asia Rugby Union had received the "correct version" from the Hong Kong coach.

Someone must have looked up "Hong Kong anthem" online and found the 2019 protest song Glory to Hong Kong instead...

Ip suggests those responsible be extradited to HK

And now host South Korea has done some editing of that match, by removing the footage of playing the wrong song, or Glory to Hong Kong, and replaced the audio with the March of the Volunteers so that it looks correct in the history books.

Meanwhile Executive Council convenor Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee has weighed in with this idea -- as Hong Kong and South Korea have an extradition treaty, the Hong Kong police should ask for the South Korean police assistance in apprehending the suspects who violated the national security law and extradite them to Hong Kong to face trial.

Has anyone told her that the South Koreans will not do this as no crime was committed in their country?

It's ironic how the more pro-Beijing politicians talk about the incident, the more Glory to Hong Kong is mentioned, when they claim they want to bury it into a black hole like it never existed...

Oops Wrong National Anthem

Players' reactions when Glory to Hong Kong was played

Outraged government officials and claims of a criminal act committed have caused a diplomatic incident at the Asian Rugby Sevens Series in Incheon, South Korea.

Before the match between Hong Kong and host South Korea, the wrong anthem for the former was played. Instead of the March of the Volunteers, China's national anthem, the protest song of 2019 called Glory to Hong Kong was played.

Hong Kong complained to Asia Rugby Union

On the pitch the players don't seem puzzled or freaked out that a massive faux-pas is happening -- they seem more focused on their upcoming game, which they went on to win.

But back in Hong Kong there were either (private) shrieks of delight of hearing the banned song again, or shrieks of anger condemning the mistake.

A spokesman said the Hong Kong government "strongly deplores and opposes the playing of a song closely associated with violent protests and the 'independence' movement in 2019".

The Hong Kong team had submitted the correct recording of the national anthem to the tournament organiser, but the wrong song was played due to "human error of a junior staffer of the local organiser".

Glory to Hong Kong was protest anthem in 2019

Since then the Hong Kong government wrote to the Rugby Union, demanding they "deal with this matter seriously, launch a full and in-depth investigation and submit a detailed report."

After the song was played, the Hong Kong team told the organisers the song was wrong and then played the March of the Volunteers during the prize presentation ceremony when the Hong Kong team won the final.

Asia Rugby has since apologised for the incident.

Meanwhile some pro-Beijing politicians went ballistic when they heard about the incident.

Ronny Tong Ka-wah, a member of the Executive Council, urged the government to investigate whether anyone in the city was an accomplice to helping or planning the playing of the song in Incheon.

Tong believes there could be criminal intent

"This was surely not a careless mistake. It must be a criminal act with mens rea [criminal intent], and people involved could have constituted sedition under the Crimes Ordinance, as well as secession or collusion with foreign forces under the national security law," Tong wrote on his Facebook.

Lawmaker Junius Ho Kwan-yiu who can be hardline and emotional, suggested dissolving the Hong Kong rugby team and accused the players of "not responding at all" when the song was played.

"They let the country face humiliation. They have completely failed and lost our confidence, and the only solution to this is to disband the team," he said.

Scholz's Beijing Visit Raises Eyebrows

Scholz met Xi in Beijing for a one-day visit

German media are pointing out Chancellor Olaf Scholz "weird" 11-hour visit to Beijing. Aside from the extreme Covid-19 protocols, critics say the German Chancellor is going against the country's strategy with regards to its relationship with China, and this could threaten unity of the European Union.

But first navigating the pandemic in China.

Everyone who got onto the plane with Scholz had to take two PCR tests before arriving in the Chinese capital, and a third as soon as they landed. The "big whites" in hazmat suits did throat swab tests in an airport transporter on the tarmac.

People in hazmat suits tested German delegation

But Scholz did not take the Chinese test -- instead he insisted on using a German-made test with the Chinese watching him have the test done.

The trip was also one day to avoid Scholz staying in a hotel and either contracting the virus or spreading it (if he was positive).

And everyone on board the plane had to sign an agreement that if they contracted the virus in China, they could fly back to Germany to avoid being stuck in quarantine in Beijing.

After the one-day trip was over, the plane flew from Beijing to South Korea where the flight crew were changed before continuing back to Berlin.

One German reporter wryly notes while all the above mentioned stuff was weird, it all points to both countries not trusting each other -- like their respective coronavirus tests for starters.

China allowed to buy a stake in Hamburg port

Many are wondering why Scholz is cozying up to President Xi Jinping, whom many consider a dictator because of the serious human rights violations on the Uyghurs, Hongkongers, and his own people during the pandemic, and how he is threatening to take over Taiwan by force.

It is strange that Scholz pushed for a Chinese state shipping company Costco to buy a  24.9 percent stake in one of Hamburg's port terminals, going against his own foreign minister's advice. 

He also brought a delegation of business leaders to Beijing to do deals even though the country is trying to be less dependent on China. 

Maybe that was all for show, or part of the deal to allow his short visit to go ahead?

"The trip sends a message that even though Berlin should be seriously rethinking the relationship with China, they are going back to business as usual," said Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, an assistant professor at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan, and a former political advisor to the European Parliament.

Germany giving mixed messages on this trip

"While I think Europe needs to find a way to constructively talk to China from a position of strength, what Berlin is doing undermines that position by pursuing its own interests at the expense of the emerging, yet fragile European unity that we've seen since the Ukraine war," she added.

Scholz's visit is seen as a big win for Beijing -- again making critics wonder why the chancellor was endorsing a dictator. Surely he knew what happened when Germany cozied up to Adolf Hitler? Or perhaps he forgot it didn't have a good ending?